Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag, vol. MMCXVI

A Mexican consular official, apparently provoked by an American demonstration protesting his government's complicity in illegal immigration flows, permits himself to speak freely:

Once more, the meaning of the post-nationalism and economism of the American establishment is not that parochial sentiments and atavistic loyalties have been transcended, but that America has disarmed before the revanchist sentiments of others. American cosmopolitanism simply means that the nationalisms of others predominate. If I might paraphrase Chesterton, no man will be willing to sacrifice, and perhaps yield up his life, for nothings such as the free movement of capital and labour; but men will sacrifice for their nation - their people and culture and world-image of these in history, and the reclamation of 'lost territories', associated with national honour, has always been a prime motivation. A decadent state, inclusive of the political and economic establishments of a country, will war against the nation over which it rules, seeking to efface the world-image that has nourished and sustained it - and will employ the nationalisms of others in the process.

Comments (18)

The American political and economic establishment - essentially an integrated group of people - regards our present policy of de facto mass immigration as desirable. After all, it fattens the bottom lines of the plutocracy, and who cares about the little people? As the cliche goes, the Republicans want the profits and the Democrats want the voters. But in the process, the actual substance of American culture - not to mention her political institutions - is being hollowed out; hence, all of the neoconservative nonsense about America as a propositional nation: America has never, and ought never, have anything so gauche as a common culture, but should be defined by subscription to a set of ideological propositions about democracy, free markets, and the whole run of rot. That is American post-nationalism, in a nutshell: the nation, the common culture and heritage of the people, no longer matters, only a few disconnected economic statistics.

This, however, only means that America submits to the national sentiments of others. Like Mexicans. Or Albanians. We cease believing in our own traditions, but they cleave to theirs. And so we are destined to suffer the loss of our culture, and, eventually, the loss of some territory - at least 'on the ground'. This, because no sane man will go to the wall for pitiful abstractions such as the belief that capital should be a secular parody of the Holy Spirit, going whithersoever it wills, and that migrations should be treated similarly. Who would be willing to die so that the rich and the global poor can conspire against his childrens' future?

And that is what we now experience: the American state, the regime, now wars against the American people, decimating their society, their culture, their memories, in the name of their illusions - the nationalism of Mexicans doesn't matter, as long as they are willing to work for less than an America, while an American's belief in his own heritage is feared and loathed.

You ignore the fact that most Republicans are strongly opposed to mass immigration, regardless of what effect it has on the bottom line. A large part of why Republicans so consistently oppose mass immigration is because it undermines the rule of law, just as it undermines assimilation into the culture (and thus undermines the culture itself), without which we must wave goodbye to "e pluribus unum." Those two things -- the rule of law, and the melting pot culture called America -- are two of the propositions we support. You omitted both.

One of the first things we learn in the practice of argumentation is to summarize one's opponent's position truly and carefully, so that in that summary the opponent sees himself and his views, and acknowledges that what he sees there is truly himself. But I do not see the Republican, the conservative, or the neo-conservative views accurately portrayed in your dismissive and insulting summary. It's another instance in you of what in others you call alchemy.

Further, you argue as if most businesses were owned by Republicans, and not Democrats. What percentage of businesses are owned by Democrats, and what percentage of them push stridently for open borders? From your summary, none worth noting.

As for your assertion that the American political and economic establishment is an essentially integrated group of people, I'm waiting for your supporting evidence.

The only mention of Republicans and Democrats came in a reference to an old cliche; I believe that the cliche has some currency, though it obviously represents a simplification: the dominant factions in each of the parties, the factions that provide the bulk of the financing, are desirous of the continuation of mass immigration. These are scarcely the most numerous factions, but money talks and patriots walk. That a majority of Republicans oppose the de facto policy, on grounds of its violation of the rule of law, and its subversion of assimilation, demonstrates that healthy, patriotic sentiment is still abundant in America; that this sentiment, on these questions, has failed to move the government for two generations speaks volumes. This failure has not resulted from a want of conviction among the Republican masses, but from the absolute indifference of the people who matter. Why else was enforcement curtailed in the wake of Reagan's immigration reform in 1986? Businesses groused to various levels of government, moaning about the effects of the rule of law on their balance sheets, and the nation was history. For the record, many businesses are owned by Democrats, even men of the left; and, I seem to recall, the furthest reaches of the upper class tend to skew to the left. It was a cliche, not an analytically precise statement.

Conservatives, moreover, are all over the map, though most assuredly oppose, at a minimum, the de facto open-borders policy. A sizable percentage of nationally elected Republicans, however, support massive guest-worker programs and other legal fig leaves, so I'm really uncertain that this gets us very far on the fundamental questions. As for the neoconservatives, though some of the folks at City Journal oppose mass immigration, the default position of neoconservatism on the national question is that of the propositional nation, according which a diverse and fragmented people are bound together by common adherence to an American creed. Mass immigration, in consequence, tends to be a matter of indifference, since assimilation has been defined downward, and since the policy itself is defended on economic and electoral grounds.

As for the essential unity of the political and economic establishments, no evidence is required beyond the existence of K Street and the three-thousand-dozen lobbyists, the revolving doors between public service, corporate work, and lobbying, and the actuality of present policy. This is not to deny tensions, rifts, and conflicts with the establishment; such things are normal and ineliminable, and even obtained under communism. If however, there obtained substantial dissent on the point at hand, those dissenters would have leveraged the support of the American majority into substantive reforms. I'm not holding my breath.

You ignore the fact that most Republicans are strongly opposed to mass immigration, regardless of what effect it has on the bottom line

Logically, in the era of Tom Delay and George Bush, we would have seen a great effort then to do something serious and meaningful about mass immigration.
Building the wall, an old soviet trick to solve messy problems, isn't the answer. For one thing, much of the immigration had been for seasonal employment and it locked them in the States.

hence, all of the neoconservative nonsense about America as a propositional nation: America has never, and ought never, have anything so gauche as a common culture, but should be defined by subscription to a set of ideological propositions about democracy, free markets, and the whole run of rot.

There's no way to define the common culture without the propositions that specify it. Certainly it is true that America is more than just "democracy" and "free markets." However, as a concrete whole we are undeniably a democratic and free-marketeering people. If you remove these "ideological propositions," America cannot be defined. It becomes unintelligible.

Now it can certainly be said that these propositions are inadequate. If so, what is needed is not to recognize a common culture, since by these propositions it is already recognized, but to inform that culture with better propositions.

An actual culture is always antecedent to the propositions that, inadequately, specify and define it, both for outsiders and purposes of summation, just as the practices of Christianity and the experience of Christ in the sacraments and liturgical life of the Church were antecedent to the Creed and the writings of the Fathers. Faith sought understanding; and culture seeks concretization.

Specifically, there have been periods of American history in which free trade, as this is currently understood and advanced as a proposition about American culture, was not practiced. Similarly for democracy, as the democratic element of the American experience has become more prominent, owing to a handful of Constitutional amendments, the development of mass culture, and the unitary national state of the post-Civil War period, than it was initially. Through all of this, American culture endured, though it undeniably underwent evolution. Propositions about such things are always inadequate to the realities.

We don't require better propositions; we require the jettisoning of the entire notion that propositions are adequate to the expression of a culture, to its understanding of itself. America would not be the America we have known were it majority Hispanic, because her culture would be akin to that of a Latin American nation; the subscription of Hispanics to a set of Americanist propositions cannot alter that cultural reality. Propositions are to American what creeds are to Christianity: adumbrations, nothing more, nothing less.

Russ,
I said that Republicans oppose mass immigration. They do. If you don't like the plans some Republicans offer, fine. I don't like some of their plans either. But that is beside the point: Contrary to what Jeff said, Republicans are not in favor of mass immigration, not even for the reasons Jeff falsely cites. It sounds like, at one level, you argue that the Republicans should not set up a fence and yet criticize them for not doing so, as if not doing so proves they are not serious about immigration.

I'm wondering what plan to curtail mass immigration you do support, and if there might not be many Republicans who support it also.

Jeff,
More alchemy: No matter how you try to transform it for your own unsubstantiatable propositions, your cliche was a falsehood, not a simplification.

Even more alchemy: You allude to the numerous inevitable and unfixable rifts that exist between the two sides, then magically transform those enduring and remedyless rifts into "essential unity."

Wall Street and the DNC do not see eye-to-eye; their deep and abiding differences are not essential unity.

And you'll need to do far more than merely refer to lobbyists and to K Street to prove your assertion about the alleged unity of the political and economic "establishments," as if (1) somehow their mere existence proved your point, as if (2) politicians and lobbyists were not frequently at odds with themselves and with each other, as if (3) there really were so-called "establishments," as if (4) those "establishments" were monolithic, and as if (5) your Marxist-informed aggregationist modes of political and economic analysis yielded insight into the real world and not radical distortion concerning it.

I find it interesting how in your worldview these yet-to-be-named power brokers are so politically and economically skilled that they can actually set up complementary "establishments," but are so inept they can't seem to make them work well. Despite their remarkable skill at setting up "establishments," they keep tripping themselves up with bad laws and stumbling over their own ridiculous investments and their own counter-productive political, economic, and cultural arrangements -- even though they have the help of the other "establishments," and the unnamed wizards who run them.

Yes, Wall Street and the DNC are forever at odds; that's why Chuck Schumer assiduously cultivates their interests and the Democratic party receives so much funding from investment bankers (Goldman Sachs, anyone?). That's why men like Robert Rubin have been dark eminences around the DNC for the better part of the past two decades. That's why Bill Clinton and the DLC more or less consolidated the economic shifts of the preceding decade, inclusive of those towards financialization, free trade, and the greater influence of Wall Street. Get real.

Even more alchemy: You allude to the numerous inevitable and unfixable rifts that exist between the two sides, then magically transform those enduring and remedyless rifts into "essential unity."

It's not alchemy; it's standard analysis of social formations (Ooohhh! - there's that scary "leftist" terminology!), which always exhibit an essential unity amid all of the contingent and transitory quarrels, even the abiding ones that shift from decade to decade. Or don't, in the case of mass immigration.

The rest is pure comedy gold. To the contrary: 1)K Street proves my thesis, to the extent that I'm advancing one, because it represents the mutual interpenetration of political and corporate interests; or is corporate welfare a myth?; 2)Politicians and lobbyists can disagree amongst themselves all they desire; the very fact that they horsetrade at all demonstrates a consensus in favour of the existence of a horsetrading system - which is the point; 3)Yes, there are establishments, as no society can exist without one as the representation of a governing political consensus which answers some questions, placing them beyond controversy, leaves others open, and deems certain others illicit even to broach; 4)We've already sketched how establishments both are and are not monolithic; 5)Accusations of Marxism are a tired trope in these debates, for all of the reasons thus far discussed: establishments exist, and political science is the discipline of their interpretation, among other things. Beyond that, I'm only channeling Burnham, Francis, and Gottfried on the managerial state and its consensus politics. Of course, I pause to note the falsification of reality in the following statement:Further, your faulty historical account attributes to Republicans the immigration policy failures caused by Democrats.
Yes, because there have been no Republicans demonizing immigration restrictionists as bigoted sub-Christians, no Republicans supporting amnesties under various legal fictions, no Republicans supporting massive guest-worker programs, and no doctrinaire advocacy of the same from a Republican White House over the past seven long years.

Despite their remarkable skill at setting up "establishments," they keep tripping themselves up with bad laws and stumbling over their own ridiculous investments and their own counter-productive political, economic, and cultural arrangements -- even though they have the help of the other "establishments," and the unnamed wizards who run them.

Of course they do all of these things, because that is the nature of our crooked timber. This no more disproves the existence of political and financial establishments than the fact of scientific controversies demonstrates the absence of broad consensuses.

An actual culture is always antecedent to the propositions that, inadequately, specify and define it

Culture is antecedent to the propositions that specify it in the same way that matter is antecedent to the form that specifies it. But just as matter cannot actually exist without form, neither can culture actually exist without the propositions that specify it.

Faith sought understanding; and culture seeks concretization.

This doesn't seem to work. Both are true in a sense, but I do not see how they are true in a similar sense.

Then you argue that our culture has endured for centuries, even though our propositions have changed. True, the underlying material of the culture has remained the same, i.e., the American people, but the form of the culture has been transformed by new specifying principles, i.e., propositions.

Propositions about such things are always inadequate to the realities.

We don't require better propositions; we require the jettisoning of the entire notion that propositions are adequate to the expression of a culture, to its understanding of itself.

If you wish to describe a culture, then propositions are inadequate; if you wish to define it, they are essential.

neither can culture actually exist without the propositions that specify it.

Cultures can exist without attempts to abstract their essences into propositions, as evidenced by most primitive societies, the mythologies of which are not what we would term 'propositional'.

This doesn't seem to work.

It works in the limited sense intended, namely, that we modern Westerners have an irresistible and usually deplorable tendency towards abstraction; we cannot simply live out our cultures, but have a compulsion to overintellectualize them, falsifying their complexity.

but the form of the culture has been transformed by new specifying principles, i.e., propositions.

Propositions may be said to transform culture in the same sense that ideas may be said to have consequences, ie., only insofar as people believe in them, and align themselves with them, reordering their concrete practices in accordance with them. In other words, propositions and ideas have no power whatsoever without bodies, wealth, and power. In the case of the propositions that we are today urged to accept as constitutive of an Americanist creed, the propositions themselves were fictions conjured by interests striving to advance their agendas.

If you wish to describe a culture, then propositions are inadequate; if you wish to define it, they are essential.

Definition is always a delimitation, and to that extent a falsification of complex, existential reality; definition is thus inadequate to the preservation and understanding of a culture, though it is only definition - on your understanding of the term - that Americanists are now offering.

"Despite their remarkable skill at setting up "establishments," they keep tripping themselves up with bad laws and stumbling over their own ridiculous investments..."

Tripping up? Our elites are doing just fine. Wall Street reaps enormous private rewards and when things go bad, receive a public bailout. The kind they lampoon as "welfare", if granted to our manufacturing sector, or the hoi-polloi. A "performance driven" bonus of 16 million, after you've guided your company to a 11 billion dollar loss is pretty good work, if you can get it. Stan O'Neill says hi. Bet he contributes to both parties.

The convergence of interests between our business and cultural elites is easy to see in the scam of "Open Borders", as it serves the interests of the GOP's corporate donors seeking low wages and the Democrats multi-cultural interest groups. But it doesn't end there.

Another, less obvious example; mass media as both an instrument for the Left's Sexual Revolution and corporate profits. The ideal consumer has embraced the life-style portrayed on TV and more disposable income than most parents. Yet, non-stop stimulation of wants also has the salutary effect of moms entering the work-force so families can have...more. Sometimes, a media mogul can have it both ways; an editorial page preaching family values, while the paper's content or publishers TVs programming subverts and mocks those values. The neo-con icon, Rupert Murdock sends his regards. Bet he contributes to both parties.

There are more examples and if interested I recommend Chris Lasch's Revolt of the Elites. You might find find yourself wondering why public discourse is narrowly restricted to the New York Times & Wall Street Journal, CNN & Fox, Obamillry and McCain. And questioning how after the so-called "conservative ascendancy" we have bigger deficits, a Leviathan that would make LBJ blush, legal abortion, mass immigration, the continuing dissolution of personal, family and communal ties and stand on the precipice of an economic cataclysm.

I don't know if Marshall finds the wide gulf between our economic, political and cultural elites and the rest of us troubling, but he is asking the question every sentient American must be thinking; why the silence during this "hotly contested" campaign?

Could it be that the complexity of these financial instruments is such that not even the engineers who built them know how to fix them? Or, has a "bi-partisan consensus" concluded that a policy of aggressive paper-printing and finger-crossing is preferable to an honest exploration of what went wrong and where we might be headed?

Time will tell. But, one thing is likely; a lot of people who believed in an economic model of unlimited growth sustained by infinite resources and endless technological innovation will be losing their religion, if not their shirts.

If you call poor farmers with families coming to America to find work as a type of warfare, then it beats our kind of wars. Besides, a large number of the immigrants are coming from political crises in Oxaca and Meso-Amarica.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.